Wednesday, 3 July 2013

Never mind the badgers, what about culling crap politicians?

You have to wonder what Mr and Mrs Brock have done to offend the
government.

Pencilled in for widespread culling because they pass on a form
of tuberculosis (TB) to cattle, it now appears that the meat from those
infected cows is still healthy enough for people to eat, as the Department for
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has been selling it to processors.

He called for people to spend a little bit more, at least
occasionally, and go to independent shops.

That ignores the simple fact that, for many people, watching as
their incomes reduce almost before their very eyes, they cannot easily afford
to spend much more on food.

One of the wealthiest countries in the world we may well be, but
the use of foodbanks is going through the roof – although as Tory work
and pensions minister Lord Freud (himself a millionaire) has now clarified for
us, this has nothing to do with rising poverty and everything to do with people
taking advantage. So, a bit like politicians, then.

The Umunna comments were leapt upon by the Telegraph blogs and
some of its educationally challenged contributors – who have presumably
mistaken that publication for the Daily Mail and struggle with the simplest of
matters.

This was partly because writer Will Heaven had disingenuously
claimed that Umunna had been warning against the budget supermarkets, when he
was speaking more generally about “big brands” and specifically mentioned Tesco
and Sainsbury’s.

But even then, it takes some doing to extrapolate that into
asserting that Umunna was being a ‘typical socialist’ (as at least one poster,
inflamed beyond reason, did) because the MP had admitted that he shopped at a
Tesco Express, while it seems that he also stops in at a new, local,
independent café.

For goodness sake: it’s a bloody long time since there were any
socialists in the shadow cabinet. Labour, certainly in Parliamentary terms, is
essentially just another neo-liberal party.

But also, since Umunna didn’t actually claim that nobody should ever shop at any
supermarket – budget or otherwise – and since he also stops off at least one
local, independent business occasionally, he’s apparently doing what he
suggested.

The issue that should be taken with the comments are that they suggest that
Labour has no concrete plans to tackle big business and its dominance of the
British high street.

But if you wanted an indication of the state of public discourse
in this country, in a nutshell, that’s it.

Mind, on top of that, we had the George ‘Gidiot’ Osborne in a
tweeted picture, putting the final touches to his latest spending review speech
while eating a burger.

‘I’m down with you ordinary people,’ it seemed to proclaim.
Until it became clear that it was a 10 quid burger from a fast food chain that
is somewhat posher than McDonalds.

It was obviously the perfect fodder for preparing a speech that
announced that thousands more people would be losing their jobs and others
would be having their already-frozen pay attacked further.

Oh yes, we’re all in this together.

And then dear Eric Pickles responded with a tweeted picture of
himself eating a salad, while preparing a speech. Ho ho ho.

The cost of the salad was unclear, although given his
department’s record spending on biscuits …

But such is the state of politics in the upper echelons of the
mother of parliaments.

In the meantime, Owen Paterson continues to big up genetically
modified (GM) food as though it is the answer to all our problems and that we
should embrace it – and conveniently forget all the research that suggests
that, at the very best, there are major doubts over the safety of GM food.

Fracking is to go ahead – the answer to all our energy problems,
apparently – with little apparent regard for the massive risks that that holds
for the water table and, therefore, domestic farming and food supply.

Some farmers are getting subsidies, but many others – smaller
ones particularly – continue to struggle. And nothing has been done about the
bullying behaviour of the supermarkets that Umunna wants us to sort of use sort
of less.

If all that isn’t enough to make you want to hit your head
against a brick wall, it’s difficult to know what would be.

But Mr and Mrs Brock are going to get it, so that Defra can
reduce the amount of fit-to-eat meat that it can sell to be made into pies.

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About Me

London-based journalist, writer, photographer and artist, with one Other Half and three cats.
This blog is about all sorts of things, but mostly reviews. My interests include comics and opera (and even comic opera), cats, tattoos and art.
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